


my skin has become a storm

by nirav



Category: Rookie Blue
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-10
Updated: 2013-10-10
Packaged: 2017-12-29 00:06:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/998509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nirav/pseuds/nirav
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>the way light and darkness mix under my skin has become a storm.  you don't see the lightning, but you hear the echoes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	my skin has become a storm

_i am not a graceful person.  i am not a sunday morning or a friday sunset.  i am a tuesday two am, i am gunshots muffled by a few city blocks, i am a broken window during february.  my bones crack on a nightly basis.  i fall from elegance with a dull thud, and i apologize for my awkward sadness.  i sometimes believe that i don't belong around people, that i belong to all the leap days that didn't happen.  the way light and darkness mix under my skin has become a storm.  you don't see the lightning, but you hear the echoes._

_-unknown  
_

* * *

 

This isn’t going to be simple.

It was just going to be a ride home, but it turned into stopping at a 24 hour grocery for Advil, and then an empty parking lot and a busted light, Holly going in for a hug and Gail finding her mouth instead, and suddenly there’s the cold of a car door seeping into her back and Holly’s heat against her front, the two of them moving with lips and hands and hips.

Holly’s mouth rips away, her forehead pressing into Gail’s neck as her body snaps tight for a long moment before slumping.  Gail stares at the burned out streetlight above them, eyes wide and dull.

 

* * *

 

“It’s simple.”

This isn’t going to be simple.

“You don’t have to let it get complicated,” Holly goes on.  Her voice is soft in the dead air of the car—not quiet, because it rings around in the emptiness of night, but soft, like pillows and blankets and falling back asleep at nine in the morning because there’s nowhere to go, no one to please, no one to _be_ —and Gail doesn’t say anything.  There’s a squeak as Holly’s hands tighten on the steering wheel, skin against leather, and Gail winces.

“Gail, come on,” Holly says.  “Don’t just clam up and not talk to me.”

“My friends are in the hospital,” Gail says.  Her words fog against the passenger window. 

“They’re going to be okay.”  Holly’s hand lifts off the wheel for a moment, hovering halfway across the car to Gail before she pulls it back with a sigh.

“What’s simple?”

This isn’t going to be simple.

“This,” Holly says vaguely.  She stops at a red light and her hands swirl ineffectually in front of her before dropping to her lap.  “Me driving you home.  You kissing me.  Any of it, all of it.”

“My friends are in the hospital,” Gail says again.  “Someone tried to kill us today.”

“But he didn’t.”

“You don’t know that. Not yet.”

“What do you want me to say?” Holly pushes a hand through her hair, jaw tight.

“Nothing,” Gail mutters.  She props her chin in her hand and watches the passing lights on her way home.

 

* * *

 

A day passes, and nothing changes.  Two days, and Sam is on the mend.  Oliver is home with Celery, all smiles and wry jokes.  Chloe is going into surgery.  Gail hasn’t spoken to anyone who isn’t Dov and Holly hasn’t offered as much as a text message.

A week passes, and the rest of them are back on regular duty.  Chloe is awake, and Dov is still with her.  Chris is back to his smiles, Marlo is gone from 15 for good, and Gail is riding with Traci for the day.

Then they find a body, and Andy and Nick are avoiding each other as they help manage the scene, and then Holly is there.

“Hey,” Holy says quietly as she pauses at Gail’s side.

“Hi,” Gail says.  “Transport should be here in ten.”

“Okay,” Holly says with a slow breath.  Traci watches the two of them, pausing in her notes, and an eyebrow raises.  Gail spins on her heel and stomps off to shoo teenagers away.

The morgue transport arrives, and they start loading the body.

“Someone needs to stay with the remains,” Traci says.

“I’ll go,” Gail says flatly, beating Andy and Nick to the punch.  She sneers in their direction.  They could deal with riding together in the aftermath of Sam.  Good riddance.

It’s quiet in the morgue as Holly examines the body.  Gail sits at Holly’s desk, arms and legs crossed, and stares unashamedly at Holly’s profile.  Her shoulders ache under the tension of sitting up so straight.  The silence breaks occasionally as Holly mumbles something into the tape recorder; the fluorescent lights reflect off of her glasses and slide in patterns over her jawline.

An hour passes, and Gail doesn’t move.  Another thirty minutes, and Holly sets her recorder down, standing from the stool and stretching.  She rolls her head back and forth on her neck, pushes her glasses on top of her head, rubs her eyes.

“Are you ever going to move?” She doesn’t look at Gail as she speaks.

“I haven’t decided yet.”  Her head tilts to the side, eyes narrowing as Holly turns to face her, and she sucks in a deep breath.  “I should have called you or something.”

“Yeah, well.”  Holly shrugs.

“I’m trying to—I’m not good at this.”

“I hadn’t noticed.”  Holly’s arms fold over her chest, an eyebrow raising, and Gail huffs out a sigh.

“I just—don’t know what I’m doing.”

“You say that like I have some road map laid out in front of me,” Holly says drily.  “Come on, Gail, we’re adults, yeah?  We can talk about this—whatever it is.”

Gail finally moves, uncrossing her arms and twining her fingers together over her knees.  She’s still wearing her uniform jacket, and suddenly it’s too hot even in the chilled morgue.

“I kissed you,” she says, shifting her weight.  “I mean, you kissed me, but then I kissed you.  And then we—”

“Yeah,” Holly says.  “And it was good.”  She bites down on her lower lip, absent and subtle, and Gail would be overheated even if she weren’t in a heavy jacket.

“Cops are screwy people,” Gail says.  “It’s why we stick with each other.”

“My dad was a cop, you know,” Holly offers.  “I get it.”  She smirks when Gail’s eyes widen and then narrow.

“Why the hell would you want to get involved with a cop, then?”

“Because I like you.”  Her head tilts to one side for a moment, and she smiles.  “It’s that simple.”

This isn’t going to be simple.

“I’m kind of—”

“Brash?  Insecure?  Rude?”

“Messy,” Gail finishes.  “Like—stomping mud all over peoples’ lives messy.”

“I’m kind of messy, too,” Holly says.  “Last relationship I was in, she gave me a key to her apartment and I took a six month fellowship in Ireland instead.”

“I cheated on Nick,” Gail mumbles. 

“Well, that was shitty,” Holly deadpans.  “But it happened, and it’s done, and it doesn’t impact us.”

“I’m just—not great at being with people.”

“You’re pretty great at standing alone, yeah.”  Holly nods her agreement.  “But there’s nothing wrong with letting someone else stand with you, too, you know.”

Gail watches her, shoulders slumping.  Her throat works around words—the weight of a family name and her boyfriend leaving her for her friend and the cold fear of waking up bound to a table in the dark—but nothing comes out.

“There’s a lot I don’t know how to talk about.”

“And there a things I need to learn to deal with,” Holly says.  “Like the reason you have to wear a bulletproof vest.  There’s no rush.”

“What if it isn’t worth it?

“What if it is?”

“Seriously?” Gail grumbles.  “That’s your argument?”

“Do you have a better one?”

“I’m not the brainiac here.” 

Holly smirks and finally moves, crossing the small room to stand in front of Gail.  Her hands slide under the collar of Gail’s jacket to the Kevlar covering her narrow shoulders. 

“I’m not good at—relationships,” Gail says again.

“You don’t have to be perfect,” Holly says.  Her hand curls around Gail’s jaw, tugging her chin up and forcing her gaze up to meet Holly’s.  “You just have to try.”

“You promise?”

“Yeah,” Holly says quietly.  “Now stop talking.”

It isn’t simple, but Gail wraps her hands around Holly’s wrists and lets Holly kiss her.  It isn’t simple, being graceless and fragile, but maybe it doesn’t have to be simple to be a good idea.

**Author's Note:**

> i should probably be working on that other story, but a) thoughts happened and i wanted to do something with them, and b) i was hospitalized last week so i'm gonna do what i want because i'm petulant like that. despite a full recovery i'm choosing to blame any shortcomings in the above story on that.


End file.
